So Big - Edna Ferber

. .

Résumé :
The story follows the life of a young woman, Selina Peake De Jong, who decides to be a school teacher in farming country. During her stay on the Pool family farm, she encourages the young Roelf Pool to follow his interests, which include art. Upon his mother's death, Roelf runs away to France. Meanwhile, Selina marries a Dutch farmer named Pervus. They have a child together, Dirk, whom she nicknames So Big, from the common question and answer How big is baby? So-o-o-o big! (Ferber, 2). Pervus becomes ill and dies, and Selina is forced to take over working on the farm to give Dirk a future. As Dirk gets older, he works as an architect but is more interested in making money than creating buildings and becomes a stock broker, much to his mother's disappointment. His love interest, Dallas O'Mara, an acclaimed artist, echoes this sentiment by trying to convince Dirk that there is more to life than money. Much later in life, Selina is visited by Roelf Pool, who has since become a famous sculptor. Dirk grows very distressed when, after visiting his mother's farm, he realizes that Dallas and Roelf love each other and he cannot compete with the artistically minded sculptor. In the end, Dirk comes to appreciate the wisdom of his mother, who always valued aesthetics and beauty even as she scraped out a living in a stern Dutch community. Ultimately, Dirk is left alone in his sumptuous apartment, saddened by his abandonment of artistic values.

Biographie:
Edna Ferber (1885-1968) was a bestselling American novelist, short story writer, and playwright. Many of her books were adapted into major motion pictures as well as Broadway plays and musicals. A proud Jewish American, she was a member of the Algonquin Round Table in New York City. Most of her works feature strong female protagonists and are noteworthy for their sensitivity to racial and ethnic discrimination of her time....

Sommaire:
Edna Ferber (1885-1968) was one of the most influential American writers of the twentieth century, celebrated for her sweeping novels that captured the energy, contradictions, and ambitions of American life.Born in Michigan and raised in the Midwest, Ferber drew deeply from regional history and firsthand observation, transforming local stories into national epics. Her novels often explore themes of expansion, identity, social change, and the cost of progress, with a particular focus on strong, complex female characters navigating male-dominated worlds.Ferber achieved both critical and popular success during her lifetime. Several of her novels-including So Big, Show Boat, Giant, and Cimarron-were adapted into major motion pictures, helping to shape the cultural imagination of America's past. So Big won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1925, cementing her reputation as a major literary figure.Blending historical scope with emotional depth, Edna Ferber's work remains widely read and studied today, offering vivid portraits of the people and forces that helped define modern America....